Sir Algernon Methuen Marshall, 1st Baronet (1856-1924, born in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 as Algernon Stedman), was an English

English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 publisher

Publishing

Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...

 and teacher

Teacher

A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...

 of Classics

Classics

Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...

 and French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

. He is best known for founding the publisher Methuen & Co. (later Methuen Publishing Ltd.).

Family

He was born on 23rd February 1856, the third son of J.B Stedman F.R.C.S.

Educated at Berkhamsted School and then Wadham College, Oxford from which he graduated with a M.A. In 1884 he married a daughter of Edwin Bedford.

Methuen was an outspoken critic of the Boer War

Boer War

The Boer Wars were two wars fought between the British Empire and the two independent Boer republics, the Oranje Vrijstaat and the Republiek van Transvaal ....

.

He stood for Parliament as the Liberal

Liberal Party (UK)

The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...

 party candidate for the seat of Guildford

Guildford (UK Parliament constituency)

Guildford is a county constituency in Surrey which returns one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first-past-the-post voting system....

 in the General Election of January 1910. The seat was a safe Conservative

Conservative Party (UK)

The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...

 seat and he was unsuccessful.

In 1916, he was created a baronet

Baronet

A baronet or the rare female equivalent, a baronetess , is the holder of a hereditary baronetcy awarded by the British Crown...

 and later published his own memoir

Memoir

A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...

.

Career

After graduating from Oxford he entered teaching and rose to be head of High Croft Preparatory School at Milford from 1890 to 1895. While teaching he began as a sideline, writing a number of school text books under the non-de-plume A.W.S Methuen of which his series of French, Greek and Latin readers were best known. Among his works were books on gardening and current affairs.

In June1889, as a sideline to teaching, Methuen began to publish and market his own textbooks under the label Methuen & Co. (later Methuen Publishing Ltd.). Two months later he formally adopted Methuen as his surname.

His first success at publishing came in 1892 with the publication of Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

's Barrack-Room Ballads. He later published works by Hilaire Belloc

Hilaire Belloc

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalised British subject in 1902. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He was known as a writer, orator, poet, satirist, man of letters and political activist...

, Robert Lewis Stevenson, and Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

.

Further Reading